The present invention relates to network switches and switching, and more particularly, this invention relates to controllable virtual link aggregation Internet Protocol forwarding between systems.
In a data center comprising one or more access switches, each access switch connects two aggregation switches for redundancy. Link aggregation uses available bandwidth across a switch boundary at an aggregation layer.
In a data center system, virtual link aggregation (vLAG) devices are usually deployed as the gateway network for the access servers because the vLAG devices provide high efficient redundancy and do not waste network resources. Virtual router redundancy protocol (VRRP) is often enabled on all vLAG devices to support layer 3 (L3) traffic routing. In conventional VRRP, only the master device has the ability to route the traffic; all other backup device(s) can not. If the conventional VRRP is enabled on vLAG devices, then the L3 traffic hashed by access to the backup device side has to go through the inter-switch link (ISL) to the master device to perform the routing; it can not be routed locally even if it has uplinks to the outer network (e.g., Intranet, Internet, etc.). Because the L3 traffic has to go through the ISL to the master device, the vLAG redundancy capability is reduced and the ISL load is increased, which can affect vLAG functionalities.